Mad Men Creator Matthew Weiner on His First Film, You Are Here, and Scripting Don Draper’s Final Moments

If there is one thing Don Draper has been lacking over his solitary, six-season-long struggle with identity on Mad Men, it’s been a friend. (For those keeping track at home, Don sabotaged his single shot at this—a budding bro-ship with a neighboring cardiac surgeon, Dr. Rosen—the only way Don knew how . . . by carrying on a season-long affair with Rosen’s wife.) Knowing this, we are particularly interested in seeing Matthew Weiner’s take on friendship, in a contemporary comedy no less, via his feature directorial debut,You Are Here, which premieres at the Toronto Film Festival on Saturday. Written 10 years ago by Weiner and filmed with most of Mad Men’s production team, the comedy stars Owen Wilson and Zach Galifianakis as childhood best friends who return home after one inherits a large sum of money from his recently deceased father. Amy Poehler co-stars as Galifianakis’s on-screen sister.

In anticipation of the premiere, Weiner called us last week to discuss his impetus for writing You Are Here, his fascination with identity, and how he plans to wrap up his beloved AMC drama.

__Julie Miller:__From what I’ve read, You Are Here sounds very much like it revolves around adult friendship. Where were you in life when you decided that you wanted to explore that idea with a movie?

Matthew Weiner: I had a realization in the midst of my happy marriage that I had kind of lost most of my friends—my male friends, in particular. And I started wondering if my wife, who was certainly my best friend, supplanted those relationships. Had I changed? I wondered what if that hadn’t happened—what state would my friendships be in? And how would they be held together . . . especially as you get older.

The first line I had in the movie was really this observation on friendship, which is that friendship is a lot rarer than love because there’s nothing in it for anybody.

You’ve said that you wanted Owen Wilson to star in the film since you wrote the script 10 years ago. What qualities drew you to him and continued to draw you to him even after a decade had passed?

It’s funny—I have always found him to be an under-appreciated actor because he makes things look easy. He has a pathos and wit and intelligence that he, at times, is hiding. The ability to present that person, that’s who I thought [his character] was. And I love his voice—the voice that he uses to perform in. He is a super-smart guy, and there is always a sort of unexpected wit. So when I was writing, I thought he was an untapped resource, and in the period that followed, he just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and I had to fight really hard to get to him.

Was there an adjustment period involved as you shifted from working with the dramatic actors on Mad Mento directing comedic actors?

Honestly, the biggest difference [from Mad Men] was that I didn’t know the [You Are Here] actors, and they didn’t know me. With the show, we’re at the point where there is such a shorthand and trust. It sounds like it is a negative thing, but you’re working with new people and everyone is assessing everyone else. For me, that was the challenge.

As for the comic versus the dramatic. . . I don’t even know how to answer that because, believe it or not, a lot of the people on the show are reallycomic actors. If you want to reach any kind of poignancy or meaning a lot of times, coming from comedy is the best way to get there. These people can say, “I love you,” and it doesn’t embarrass you because it is so unexpected at a certain point.

After laboring over the script for 10 years, how married were you to each line? Were you willing to let the cast improv at all?

There was some improvisation, but they had committed to the script for the most part. I had worked on it a long time.

So much of Mad Mengrapples with personal identity and coming to terms with it. Did you find yourself also investigating identity in this script, or was it more the identity of a friendship rather than individual?

I wrote the movie right after I wrote *Mad Men,*and, of course, Mad Menwas executed before the movie. But in that time, over the course of, say, 70 episodes, I tried very hard not to step on what the movie was about, because there are different issues. It’s a contemporary story, but what I think it has in common with Mad Menis that these are three-dimensional people and they behave in a human way, and all of the unexpected twists in a story are drawn from what would actuallyhappen.

In movies and TV, we tend to fall into tropes about how characters might get out of problems. But when you look at real life, you realize that there is a lot of drama of not being able to get out of the problems. I didn’t worry about the likeability of the characters, because I cast these incredibly charming people and they get away with a lot, just like the characters on [Mad Men] do. But because it is so contemporary, I think that everyone in the audience will recognize the characters in the movie, which is a cool thing.

Identity is part of drama to me. Who am I, why am I behaving this way, and am I aware of it? A lot of this movie is about being aware of who you are. Some of it is instinctive; some of it is culled from different facets of my personality and people I know.

Since this is a contemporary project, do you worry about people in your life thinking you’ve written certain characters with them in mind?

[Laughs] I’ve been lucky with that. I think that the heart and the honesty of the movie protects them from being insulted, but yes, they might. You always hope that they’ll be flattered. What usuallyhappens is that someone who you never even had on your mind comes up to you and says, “Oh my god, that was me. I said that to you.” Either you’ve forgotten or they’re wrong, but it’s really satisfying and obviously even more satisfying when people come up to you and say that they know that person.

You said you started writing You Are Herewith questions about your own friendships in life. At the end of this process, after you’ve written the script, made the movie, and are about to premiere it, have you found answers?

I think that the answer in the movie is the answer I arrived at. Which is that people are in your life because you need them and because they need you. Taking that transaction out of it, you should realize that the most important thing is to be there for them. Over time, just sticking it out is an accomplishment. Part of being a writer is being a little bit removed and observing things, like how you feel life, and how you do a lot of things to avoid feelings in life because they make us uncomfortable. I think that was really the lesson for me in making the movie and watching it—I am reminded that there is nothing we can run away from.

Where are you in the process of scripting Mad Men’s final season right now?

I obviously have more film projects in the works and I have more TV in mind, but I am a person that does one thing at a time. And right now, I have a new challenge, which is how to end the show, so that is occupying my time.

Our other favorite AMC drama, Breaking Bad, is airing its final season as we speak. Have you been watching, and if so, are you able to enjoy it or are you just studying how [creator] Vince Gilligan is wrapping up his series?

I’m very curious what Vince is going to do. It’s not like I’m taking notes, because there is nothing that he does at all that I can use. It’s so specific to him. But I’ve lived through the ending of Sopranos, and I’ve lived vicariously through the end of *30 Rock,*which started when we did, and other shows that have ended. Every moment of what is entertainment for other people is a flash of anxiety for me. [Laughs]

You’ve spoken in the past about how you leave everything on the table at the end of each season of Mad Men, which could not have been clearer than in the final scene of Season Six, which shows Don taking his children to his childhood home. It marked such personal growth for Don that, in theory, it could have been the final image of the series. As you’re writing the last season, is there any part of you that regrets using that up?

I do have a different idea for the end of the series, but I’ll tell you, now that I’m at the bottom of the mountain looking up there, I have thought, “Wow, you idiot! You could have walked away from there.” But it’s an honor to have a challenge like this. And I love that 78 episodes into the series, people are telling me that they think that was the best episode of the show. How did that happen? I am lucky to have an audience that is invested. For me, the real pressure is living up to what those people expect. I do have an ending that is different than that, and hopefully when the series will be over, they will see it as another step in [Don’s] development.